Brand Safety: How Safe Can You Be?

Brand safety has been a topic of much consternation in the advertising industry. About a year ago, several brands took their ads off YouTube in response to a report that The Times of London published about brand ads appearing in YouTube videos that promoted terrorism.

Brand safety is the set of measures that aim to protect a brand’s image from the negative or harmful influence of inappropriate or questionable content on a publisher’s site where the ad impression is served. This could be an ad placed next to, before, or within an unsafe environment. There is a standard “thirty dozen” of categories that the advertising industry generally do not want a brand associated with. These may include: Military conflict, death and injury, Arms, adult content, spam and harmful sites, illegal drugs, hate speech, terrorism, crime, online piracy, obscenity and tobacco.

It is for the problems associated with careless ad placements, that Dochase Adx has prioritized brand safety for the advertisers that we work with. Dochase has strictly and successfully surveyed all her 1,888 publishers making sure they already go by our Ad Policies before confirming them as publishers on the platform.

Advertising on Dochase Adx, guarantees you a higher degree of your brand being safe. This is because advertisers can screen and filter our available sites by choice, they can also decide on which page and story they want their ads to appear on. Advertisers can also buy our premium inventory, as they are preferable, they are also more expensive but give the best ROI.

Dochase also guarantees high visibility as all ads on our platform appear above the FOLD on publisher site. We have more inventory transparency as you are given access to a live dashboard where you can adjust settings to best suit your brand.

How to Protect Your Brand

Know what brand safety means for you; it is important that you know what content is good for your brand and what isn’t. You might find one or more of the Toxic content mentioned before as unsafe for your brand but another brand night find it OK for them. For instance a company that sells food and beverages may have a different contextual tolerance compared to a gaming app company.

Choose a Transparent and Reputable Network or Agency; choosing a programmatic platform is crucial as it is the most important step to protecting your brand.

Opt for Premium Inventory; This option is more expensive than bidding blindly. But you will be making sure that your ads do not end up on unsafe domains or web pages.

Avoid Blacklisted Publishers; Inventory on this list seem more attractive as they have more inventory at very cheap prices. But by choosing blacklisted publishers you are putting your brand at a higher risk.

Monitor your Ads in Real-time; Use real-time data to monitor your ads and where they appear. If you notice your brand is compromised change the setting immediately. This is would help you change settings and targeting associated to your brand.